"Power Pack" May 26, 2023

[MatthewB]

Glad I didn't waste to much time on this one. My personal antipathy to the fact adults in the 21st century still believe in this nonsense would've made it unpleasant even had I noticed the connection. Congratulations to all who got it...

[clonefitz]

I'm not a big fan of having to use Google on these (I had no previous familiarity with tarot cards), but have to admit the clue for 62 down should have been a giveaway. I was focusing on the answer to that clue, ZERO, as a power (exponent), which always results in 1, so I was thinking IDENTITY. Lots of other rabbit holes to chase, but I always got to the point where I realized it's not going to be that complicated. I forgot to post over the weekend that I was spending time with Isaac. Hopefully we don't lose any funding due to an under-reported attendance figure.

[Jeanrosz]

I just finished reading the 4 Kidd novels by John Sandford. Kidd is a computer whiz who uses a tarot deck not to foresee but to help him think outside of the box to solve problems. That fact and the clue about the tarot card was enough to push me further to find all the hidden words in the star clues to solve this.
BTW if you need an author for summer reading, Sandford is great. Go to books in order and get you list of all Lucas Davenport and Virgil flowers books in series. You will love them all. My public library even has all the books. Great meta for me!

[mbryant]

I also thought “meh” when I finally connected the hidden theme words to tarot cards and saw strength as the only tarot card that fit as the solution. When others commented on the puzzle’s brilliance I kept looking and discovered the eight as confirmation. Still not my favorite puzzle but learned something as always

[BarbaraK]

Thank you to our wonderful moderators for keeping this site spoiler free!

Saw this post on the WSJ site Saturday morning and reported it. It’s still there now.

[Colin]

Didn’t see this one coming!

[Joe Ross]

Thank you to our wonderful moderators for keeping this site spoiler free!

Muggles are a fantastic community.

There were more than a few spoilerish comments, here, this week, many of which were reported. THANK YOU!

A request: Report spoiler(ish) comments using the REPORT icon (the exclamation point) at top/right of each post. Doing so alerts all moderators, allowing for quicker correction.

Keep the comments coming, but do not discuss puzzle details in public spaces before deadline, please!

[BarbaraK]

I started solving this puzzle right after opening my gas bill, so THERM in the first theme entry jumped right out at me and I was sure that was going to be the key.

The next one didn't have anything I recognized as a unit of power, but for some reason PEDE made me think of centipede, and then I was sure we were dealing with powers of 10.

decaTHERM is a thing per wikipedia
centiPEDE
megaSTAR
microTOWER (or maybe miniTOWER?)
uniVERSE

Woo hoo that must be it! But... there's a mix of positive and negative exponents. And even if we ignore that uni = 10^0, there's no zero square in a puzzle. Oh, but there was a zero in the puzzle, were there other numbers too? Nope, but wait, what was that weird clue for zero - Tarot cards? Yep, a bit of googling and I finally had the proper path.

[Joe Ross]

I ignored & missed the relevance of the somewhat conspicuous indicator clue & entry.

I started watching the last episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel when my mind was catching up on previous storylines. (Marilyn sees a psychic regularly. The psychic reads tarot cards.) 62D. *CLICK*

[Snowcat]

Knowing a lot about tarot, I thought this puzzle was super fun. The card names jumped out and while I suspected the answer because of the number of letters in STRENGTH, the FOOL/ZERO clue made it clear that the numbers of the cards were important. Clever all around.

[SusieG]

I saw THERMITE instead of HERMIT, EVIL not DEVIL, START and LOVE. The only one I correctly pulled out was TOWER and I couldn’t move beyond Tower of Power (band) so was stuck on music, which really led nowhere (other than Power of Love). Never thought of tarot. Good luck to those of you who solved!

[pjc]

Finally solved it, but not before exploring rabbit holes.

First one: seeing TOWER as a hidden word and seeing HAULER as another non-hidden answer sent me down an unproductive 'synonym' route.

Second longer rabbit hole: the majority of hidden words could be combined with the word POWER with missing letters. THERM becomes "thermAL power" and TOWER becomes "tower OF power" - and the middle hidden word could from "star power" (and didn't require any missing letters). So, I figured I'd end up with four pairs of letters - which makes eight letters. But, nothing.

I stuck the five hidden words into Google (and had VERSE instead of LOVERS) - that's when the Tarot theme jumped out and the rest fell quickly.

[JeanneC]

Didn't see it. Should have seen it. Congrats to those who did. Good luck on the mug.
Saw the “thermite” clue so I guess you can say I blew it!

[Nlobb]

I did get the right answer but not before having to spend a lot of time on Mr G . A lot of time actually since I know nothing about tarot at all and have no desire to learn either… it was a cleverly constructed puzzle but not at all my favorite due to the above reasons!!

[Mister Squawk]

Did you know that in Fritz Lang's "M" there are two Police Inspectors? One played by Otto Wernicke and the other by Theodor Loos.

Just sayin'

[Joe Ross]

Did you know that in Fritz Lang's "M" there are two Police Inspectors? One played by Otto Wernicke and the other by Theodor Loos.

Just sayin'

Cool fact.

Wondering if there is a tarot card for THE ODOR...

THEODOR LOOS

The Fool
The Magician
The High Priestess
The Empress
The Emperor
The Hierophant
The Lovers
The Chariot
Strength
The Hermit
Wheel of Fortune
Justice
The Hanged Man
Death
Temperance
The Devil
The Tower
The Star
The Moon
The Sun
Judgement
The World

[Kas]

I was baffled. In hindsight, I could, and possibly should have seen the Tarot names (vaguely familiar, maybe "Power Pack" should have tipped me off), but Step Two was no joke, either. In short: Kas 5. My hat is off to the solvers!!

[KscX]

Hermit Crab, Devil Ray, Star Fish, Tower Jellyfish, Seed Shrimp. But then what? Nothing. Because it was wrong.

[Collegetowngirl]

I got all the way to EIGHT, and then couldn't flex enough to realize that I needed to use that number to get the answer from the Tarot deck. Duh.

Same! The tarot clue first got us to notice the words inside the theme answers on Friday.

Then looked at 62D again and realized there are numbers associated with the major arcana. Thanks to Wikipedia, got those and got to EIGHT on Saturday morning.

But then stuck. Spent a day and a half in rabbit holes trying to find 3 more letters to add to it. WEIGHT is a quality but only six letters. FREIGHT? Not a quality. And only seven letters. Etc.

Oh look there are many alliterative clues! “Pot pour” is too weird to not be connected. Most of them are using P! And SATE/SATIE and MARS/MAORIS are pairs with letters added! All the whole knowing that couldn’t be it. Metas don’t have two different puzzles going on. Then looked at the letters associated with multiples of eight in the grid. Or, because “power,” maybe it’s 2,4,16, 256?

Finally with two hours to spare, realized eight is a number too, sheesh. Looked it up on that same Wikipedia article from the day before.

[Trish]

Fun seeing all the different things people focused on. Our limited experience has taught us to check everything that pops out. My husband noticed the tarot card names within the starred answers because 62d sparked his thoughts. We tried all sorts of things with the numbers on the cards after a google search. I finally thought of seeing what letter each number was on the grid and saw it spelled eight. We had already decided the answer must be strength because it was the only card that expressed a quality. Just needed to verify and low and behold… that was the number of the strength card! We were so proud! We have had so much fun with these puzzles and having this forum and the muggle zoom has added to our fun! We laugh at how obsessed we have become! Can’t wait for Thursdays!